The Story of The Self-Destructing Machine and The Experienced Loner
by PursuitofDarkness
Summary: A story that alternates between dark and romantic, and also including a lot of OC's, though the two main characters are kept from the cannon series. The events of this fanfic are from the past... or rather from an alternate timeline.
1. Chapter 1 - Their Past

The world is rotten, without any doubt. The way we organize ourselves by groups, the way we idolize certain people based on looks and appearances alone. I despise it. I despise lies and I despise those that aren't true to themselves… in other words, I hate myself the most.

"Hey, hey, what are doing for launch?"

"Yes, yes. You haven't eaten with us in a while."

"S-Sorry… go without me… I have something to do..." I said to them with a fake smile plastered on my face. One that seemed so genuine that they believed me without second thought.

"It's all right." Ami smiled at me, patting me on the shoulder. "It's ok." She turned to the other girls. "All right then, let's go." She waved her hands as if shooing the rest of them away from me.

As she did that I stood there in silence and waited for them to leave, then took my school bag and jammed inside every manual I had and headed outside. I sighed as soon as I made it on the stairs leading to the gymnasium. There I took out my launch box and headed to the outside faucets. With a trace of hesitation I opened it and almost threw up. Inside, replacing the food my mom made was a dead lab rat, his insides slightly staining with red the leftover rice that wasn't fully thrown out.

I closed the box immediately and threw it as far away from me as I could.

With unsteady feet I clinged to one of the faucets that spilled out cold water… I had no doubt who did it and why… but there wasn't anything that I could do… Without evidence, the teachers wouldn't even bat an eye at me and if I were to confront them head on, this would get even worse… it was still possible to get worse… I had no doubt about that.

I always had to be a good girl… a good girl…

"A good girl wouldn't ever do something like this!" I shouted in anguish as I pulled up the sleeves of my shirt, revealing bandages on my wrists that were still stained with blood marks. I let my hands soak in the cold water and at the same time, tears started flowing from my eyes.

This world is rotten. I know it, but… it's beauty violates me… I can't stop living.

"Then why not destroy it all… the world… and myself?" is what I thought, but it didn't work, after all.

All I could do right now to alleviate this loneliness was to shed all of my sorrows… in this place where no one would disturb me. That was all… all I could do.

I inspired deeply, and washed my face. To fill my empty stomach, I had to result again to drinking tap water… "It's been so long since I've eaten something at school..." I mumbled to myself, a weak smile crawling on my face. "I'll have to tell mother I lost another lunch box… she's gonna be so pissed."

With water still dripping from my face and hair I looked around, just in case… and one of my deepest fears became reality. Someone… a boy… saw me.

He didn't say a single word to me, just passed by me, briefly making eye contact.

"Um..." I tried to call out to him, but he just entered the school building without even glancing my direction again. I was at a loss of words… my lips quivered as I bit onto them… Was the facade that I worked so hard to build, to sustain, going to break as easy as that?

I grabbed my bag and darted after him. He went up the stairs at a leisure pace as I got my sights on him, but as I was about to reach him, he entered his class… my class.

And there I was, in front of my own classroom, my shirt slightly wet, my hair still dripping with water and out of breath, my bag opened, several notebooks missing from inside of it... a ridiculous state… but at that moment, as my world was about to break… I couldn't care less how I looked. I entered the classroom, but my eyes weren't searching for the boy anymore, but rather were focused on a peculiar spot.

"You've got to be kidding me..." I said to myself, letting the bag that was barely standing on my shoulder drop to the ground with a ~tud~. I slowly made my way to my desk and touched the phrases of chalk that were scribbled on it.

"Die!" "Slut." "Men hoarder." "Drop out." and many others were addressed to a single person, me. I just stood there dumbstruck for a while then while lowering my eyes, I smiled. Without even saying a word I started scrubbing at the desk in the sight of all of my classmates.

This world is rotten. This world can just break in a thousand pieces for all I care. But... even so… I can't help it… to keep living… that isn't a goal in itself, but I made it mine… because at this rate…

A tear fell on the desk filled with chalk.

… I'm not going to resist.

My 'friends' didn't talk to me again that day. That front of joy that they pulled off so well was something that I always hated… because I was doing it too. Because I didn't want to be left alone.

In the end I had to use a spare desk provided by the faculty. Holding my new manuals safely in my bag, the rest of the day went on with no other difficulties. I made an excuse to stay a bit after school to avoid unnecessary chatter and read in the library until the sun was about to set.

I made my way to the entrance, and to my surprise, in front of my locker stood the boy from earlier. It seems he'd waited for some time as he now stood squatting. How lame. At my sight he straightened up, but he couldn't help but stand a bit hunched over with his hand in his pockets.

"Those girls..." He began saying looking nowhere in particular. "... they seemed to want something from this locker." He finished, closing his eyes. "Have any ideea, why?"

I couldn't help but fumble at his question. I couldn't answer.

"Is that so?" Saying that he started to walk away, but then stopped. "What would you do if you had a weapon?"

"A… w-weapon?" I answered in surprise. What's the deal with him? Chuunibyou? Even though the question was kind of stupid and out of context, I decided to give a proper answer… the single one that came to mind at the moment.

"Make this world disappear." I said with a straight face at which he chuckled a bit.

"Then, you have the same goals as me." He turned giving me a tumbs up.

"Yeah, it's deffeneatly chuunibyou." I thought, but…

"Then I'll give you one." He said with a weird smile. "A weapon." With that, he put his bag on his shoulder and started walking towards the exit. "Humans are prone to fear. They would lie, betray and condemn their own if it means their salvation."

"Hey..." I tried to stop him, but he just ignored me… or so I thought.

"Don't you think that Oshiro-san is cute?" He said all of a sudden, smiling as he looked at me for the last time before leaving the school building.

For a moment I stood there with a mixed feeling of amazement and amusement.

It wasn't much of a hint, but… I guess this was as much as I was going to get from him.

"Way to call this a weapon… I'll punch you." I said to his retreating back as I took out my phone and quickly dialed a number. "Ah, Ami? Hello. I have something to talk to you about, would you hear me out?" I smiled. "Sure. I'm at the school right now… The park nearby? Got it. Then I'll meet you there." With that I flipped the phone closed.

"He would've sounded way cooler if he knew how to control his facial expressions though…" I said to myself as I chuckled. Making my way to my locker, I couldn't help but feel blessed to have my shoes inside for once. With a weak smile I turned to the entrance and said "Thank you." to no one in particular.

I don't know if I can do this right, but I'll try.

* * *

It didn't take more than 10 minutes for Ami to get here. It was obvious that she was just lazing around from her getup.

"What is it? I was watching an interesting show..." She said yawning.

I sighed and then inhaled deeply. My heart was racing and it was obvious that I was nervous from my trembling fingers, but I had to act indifferently for this to work, so I clenched my fists so hard that my nails sank into my palms. I felt warm liquid flooding my hands, but, surprisingly, that made me calm down a little.

"Hey, Ami… you're cute, right?" I said to her, making the swing I was sitting in move. She didn't answer. "Then why are you doing all of those things?" I looked her dead in the eyes. She faltered.

"I-It's not that I..." she started speaking but I cut her off.

"What if someone finds about it? Wouldn't if be terrible?" I continued to swing.

"Are you threatening me?" She regained her tone, and even seemed a bit angry.

"No. " I said smiling. "I have no evidence, after all."

"Then…?"

I sighed. "Haruna and Sae are really cute too." This caught her attention. "No boy would come after me after what happened today. So… why not tell the truth... that you happened to see them do all those horrible things?"

She seemed to have caught the idea.

"I know you don't like me, but this can help the both of us, right?" I finally said to her, getting down from the swing. Isn't that right, Oshiro Asami-san?

With that in mind, I left her be.

The next morning, the whole class was in a great ruckus, the main cause being me… or rather the identity of my bullies and their exposed actions, that mostly remained hidden until now. It seems that Asami-san was smart enough to put herself in a good light as the one unmasking the perpetrators and I was left alone. It seems that she had enough fun with me and decided to move on to playing around with boys instead.

As for me, I found a new interest… and a mechanism to destroy this mask I've built for myself. I wanted to change… I didn't want to lie to myself and to others… So, for the rest of my time in elementary school I've acquired enough psychological skills to get around on my own… from books of course.

I've also decided to keep my long hair, even though I've got a lot of scorn from the girls for it's beauty in the past, but I've learnt from mistakes… From now on I've decided to stop having artificial friends and to seek real ones instead… for that…

"Hey, Hikigaya-kun." I said to the lone boy climbing his way to our new high school.

For that, I've decided to start with the boy that saved me back then, and the one that made me realize my potential as a truthful human being.

"Y-Yo… Hiratsuka-san." He said with a forced smile. I smiled back to him, the only difference being that mine was genuine.

The mask I made for myself was crumbling, slowly, as if self-destructing.

* * *

Now… let the story of The Self-Destructing Machine and The Experienced Loner begin. A story set ten years before the original Oregairu, and based on what Hachiman once said: "If only I've been born 10 years earlier..." in response to Hiratsuka-sensei's teachings.


	2. Chapter 2 - Their Understanding

To be a good girl. That was my objective, a goal I wanted to achieve no matter the cost. A goal that changed shape over time, becoming more twisted and grim in nature... and ultimately, a means to keep lying to myself… a lie meant to cover my cowardice.

"Are you having fun at school?" I would just rather drop out. "I see… then you must have lots friends, right?" Girls that stay with me just for appearances and boys that don't have any real interest in what I have to say. "You're just like your father when he was young. He was really popular back then." A drunkard that abused his wife and daughter until the moment he died of pulmonary cancer. "You're such a good girl, Shizuka." I…I am no such thing… I keep lying and lying without end to make you happy… nothing more… I... "I love you, Shizuka." I don't deserve this…

"Me too… I love you too… mother..." My mother's kind words always hurt me, but most of all, the thing that hurt the most was that the only truth I said to her was so hypocritical in nature that even I found it funny.

They say that in order to attain happiness one must rob someone else of theirs.

The fact that I was making mother happy by stabbing myself… and that for my own self satisfaction nonetheless, seemed to confirm that which was stated earlier. Nothing more, and nothing less. I was afraid to tell her the truth, so I hid…

I hid behind my mask... the twisted and hideous mask of the good girl… the one that gets everything right… the perfect being that I was never going to become.

But…

Lately… I've been able to hold a half truthful conversation with her… and even though my path, filled with thorns as it was, just started… I believed that I could walk it until the very end.

Because I wasn't alone anymore.

"Hey, Hiki~gaya~kun." I said to the boy that was listening on his headphones, ignoring me, and everything else, apparently. Seeing things as such I sat on his desk in order to get his attention.

"Hiratsuka-san..." He responded while avoiding eye contact. He weakly pulled out the chord from his phone and stood up. Without a word, we both headed towards the exit, our destination being the same as always, the shop downstairs and then to the unused storage room at the end of the second floor corridor. Even though we didn't share what others may call a 'special' relationship, I couldn't deny the fact that our circumstances were similar… at least similar enough for us to engage in conversation with one another. We were, at this point, loners… both of us being forced to acknowledge our personalities for what they were, and deciding to remain alone to protect ourselves from harm and useless relationships.

We had little in common except for our refusal at coming to terms with the current social norms, but one thing was surely similar. Both of us were kind enough to accept the other. Our classmates would surely call it something in the likes of "Losers licking each other's wounds.", but that didn't bother me.

"I decided to live my life without lying to myself." I said all of a sudden making a pose. "I'll follow the way of a true shonen manga protagonist!" Hikigaya choked on his sandwich.

"*hack* *wheeze* Don't take me by surprise with your nonsense *cough* this early in the day. It's bad for my health… both physical and mental at that..." even though I didn't hear the last part I couldn't let his comment slide.

"What are you saying, Hikigaya? Shonen-manga protagonists are the best of the best, without exception. It would be immoral to pass them off as simple nonsense." It was preposterous to even think something like that… after all… "Shonen-mangas aren't simple scraps of the otaku culture." Yes, truly. "Shonen-mangas are life itself." I said while pointing at the seemingly uninterested and somewhat taken aback Hikigaya.

"Yes, yes… I was wrong." He responded to my heartfelt speech whilst resuming to eat at his sandwich. I could only hope that he's learnt his lesson.

With that, I sighed and pulled another cigarette from my pocket only to be met with a scornful gaze from him as I flicked open my lighter.

"I thought this didn't bother you." I said as I continued to light up my cigarette regardless, at which he sighed.

"It's just that I would much rather appreciate it if this room wasn't turned into a smokery." With that he moved his chair as far away from me as possible, but close enough to continue our aimless banter. He surely didn't want his clothes to smell, or perhaps this disturbed his eating… I couldn't tell.

Yet, at that moment, making me lose my train of thoughts, a knock came from the door, and just as I was about to throw out my cigarette out of the window the door opened. To our collective surprise, inside the room entered a stunning looking girl that I've never seen before, most probably a senpai. Finding us there must've come as a shock to her as she met us with an awkward smile.

"Am I disturbing something?" She said, making it apparent that there must've been a good reason for a girl and a boy to be alone together in an unused storage room. I felt a little embarrassed, yet Hikigaya denied it completely.

"No. We were just eating our lunch. There's no need to be considerate of us." He maintained his bleak expression as he answered her, or at least so it seemed until I noticed that his cheeks too, were slightly red.

"Ah, that's good to know." She said as she stepped boldly into the room… or he? I couldn't tell before as she stood in the doorway, but she wore pants. It wasn't really a rule at Sobu High at the time regarding the use of male uniforms for girls, but it seemed weird nonetheless. The fact that she had short hair didn't really help much either. "I didn't know that this room was used by one of the clubs." She said as she looked inside one of the boxes in the back of the room.

"No… actually, we aren't in a club." I couldn't help but answer while shifting my position on the window sill to better see her. "We just pass time here from time to time."

"I see..." Her voice lost all of it's previous vigor as she continued to search. "Then… you're just wasting your time, I take it?" Her words were cold as ice. "Your time is valuable. It's a limited, finite resource that, once used, can never be reclaimed. If you are incapable of doing something worthwhile, at least do what that you like. In due time it might prove useful. That's why clubs exist, after all."

"No. You're wrong." Without any warning Hikigaya spoke. "There is no guarantee that doing something you like would yield any results, after all, only about 20% of the people currently employed are content with their job."

"And what you're saying is…?" The girl said as she pulled out a pile of documents from the fifth box she'd searched by now.

"Hardwork betrays none, but dreams betray many. Working hard alone doesn't assure you that you'll achieve your dreams. Actually, there are more cases where you don't. Even so, working hard at something is some consolation at least." He folded his arms in his chair, a meek smile spreading across his face as he continued. "At least then you wouldn't be as naive to believe that all of your worries would simply disappear over time."

His words were truthful, but they contained something I didn't realize for myself until just now. "Your worries wouldn't simply disappear over time." There was something I've overlooked. I've been delving so much in this half baked friendship we've been sharing that I forgot my goal. To destroy myself. To break this mask that I was still wearing in the presence of others… I didn't even realize that I was starting to accept this girl's beliefs as my own if not for Hikigaya.

All of a sudden the door busted open and another intruder popped his head inside. He didn't even seem to acknowledge our presence.

"Hey, Yukimura, you done here?" He shouted, then as if dumbstruck he gave a bow to the both of us once he realized that the person he was searching for wasn't alone.

"Yes. Quite." She said as she glared for one last time at us before storming out of the door with a bunch of documents in hand.

"I'm sorry for our president, he can be quite a nuisance sometimes." He bowed once more and left the room chasing after her/him? I was still confused, but that exchange earlier had proven to me that I still had a ways to go before I could shatter this mask… after all, if you wanted to break something you'd need a hammer… and I knew how I was about to obtain it.

"Hey… Hikigaya-kun..." I said to him still looking at the closed door. "Do you want to form a club?"

"Huh?" His mouth hanged half open as if waiting for someone to feed him. Sorry, but I don't have any more food to give to you. "Haven't you heard what I said earlier?"

"I know that… but… I don't want to remain the same." I said looking at him in the eyes. "I'm done running away." He sighed and didn't move his eyes from the floor for a couple of seconds. I couldn't tell what he was thinking at a glance, but what I could tell was that his answer will come in due time.

I was right.

"I… I have no reason to stop you from doing what you want and if you require my name for establishing this club, I don't have anything against being a ghost member." He stood up, making his way towards the exit. "Just, don't expect too much from me. Class is about to start."

"Ah… Right." I was shocked that he would accept my proposal from the get go as I imagined that I had to force him to do so one way or another. A smile of realization spread across my face as I got down from the window sill and chased after him. He wasn't nice or anything of the sorts… he just didn't want to have me on his consciousness if I did something stupid after he would've refused me. It was a no brainer that after he would do so, the distance between us would increase with each passing day, leading us to become strangers once again. Then I'd have lost the support of our daily conversations, the only thing that kept me afloat at the moment, the only thing that I've come to enjoy about school. If I would've lost those precious moments, I don't know what I would do. I was just that insecure about myself and such a coward that the thought of making friends with someone else didn't even register… and he realized it… that Hikigaya. That's why he forced himself to accept my proposal, or at least that's what I think. There's no way for me to read someone else's thoughts in order to confirm my theory. "Hey, Hikigaya." I said as I almost caught up with him, making him stop and turn towards me. "I… I don't know… your number… or your mail… so..." As I was panting, without a word, he took out his phone and gave it to me. So you want me to put it in, huh? I gave it back to him after I finished introducing my data and taking his.

"Let's get going then." He finally spoke, making me hurry after him.

"Sorry." I said to no one in particular as we continued walking towards our classroom.


End file.
